From This Moment On
by HM Grayson
Summary: Where were you when you realized everything had changed? Blackwater drabbles.
1. Seth & Jasper & Leah & Jacob

Disclaimer: _Twlight_ is the property of Stephenie Meyer, not me. The title is from a song by Shania Twain.

A/N: These are more character sketches than anything, but I wanted to see if I could say anything worth saying in a few words. Turns out, I'm not really good with limits. Oh well. Here's the beginning of a collection of inter-related drabbles about my favourite werewolf couple.

_

* * *

_

_Seth is the first to know...as only Seth can..._

He liked people. People were _always _interesting.

Neat.

Cool.

And he had grown up with Leah, stuck by her through bruised knees and bruised hearts and losing Dad. His whole life, it was him and Leah.

Except when he was following Jacob around, trying to mimic every move the older boy made.

So when everyone gathered around Seth on his seventeenth birthday and he looked up and saw Jacob and Leah whispering in the corner _too_ close together, he only had one thought:

Oh.

_

* * *

_

_..and Jasper doesn't count, because it's almost like he cheated..._

Being around the werewolves was overwhelming. Their emotions changed too rapidly to give him peace and underneath everything ran the current of anger that was the source of so much of their power.

The bombardment never stopped and so Jasper picked up everything, even the tiny surges of feeling they appeared unaware of, feelings that had not yet travelled from his realm to Edward's. Emotions free from the domain of thought.

For now.

Two hundred years helped him to comprehend: it wouldn't be long now.

The storm would come soon.

_

* * *

_

...but Leah had sworn it wouldn't happen again...

Half-asleep, her mind was wandering...

She was thinking she needed groceries... and after lunch she should head to the garage... Jake would be on break and they could go for a run and maybe even a swim if she was lucky...

That was when she felt her mouth, twisted upwards into a smile. A big, honking, _stupid _smile.

Leah ran. By herself. In human form.

For forty miles.

Then she borrowed someone's cellphone and begged Seth to come pick her up and not say a word.

* * *

_... too bad Jacob never could follow the rules._

Two days after Leah took off and scared him to death, Jacob finally got to yell at her (for missing patrols, obviously).

But she mumbled, "I wanted to just be me again, for a little while," and he felt like a jerk, so he put an arm around her waist, and her head rested on his shoulder and they apologized to one another.

And the moment went on just a little too long.

Jacob wasn't the one to break it. The shock had him paralyzed because that shouldn't have been possible anymore.

* * *

TBC...


	2. Quil & Rosalie & Renesmee & Embry

_Quil figures it out because of Claire...of course..._

Claire didn't like playing Barbies with him, but Quil didn't take it personally, just found her another playmate so she would be happy.

He wasn't sure why Leah agreed to help, even less sure why Jacob tagged along just to sit on the couch reading, but Claire was radiant and that was all that mattered.

Claire instructed Leah how to set up the Dream House properly; the two of them giggled and whispered together on the floor. He looked at Jake and together they rolled their eyes at how adorable their girls were.

So that's why Jacob had tagged along.

* * *

_...and Rosalie might be cold but she still can feel..._

The Barren Bitches Club.

They couldn't remember which one of them came up with it, but that didn't make it less true.

"It got better," Rosalie said one day as they played poker on the veranda, both impatiently waiting for the play date to finish. "After I met Emmett."

She hadn't expected an answer; it was just the prelude to a story of how she had discovered yet another of Emmett's inexplicably lovable quirks. But Nessie's squeal drew their attention to the walkway, where Jacob carried the young girl on his shoulders.

Leah muttered, "Yeah."

And Rosalie's perfect forehead creased.

_

* * *

_

_..but even if Nessie knows everything, she thankfully hasn't got it all figured out just yet..._

The chessboard sat between them and though he knew he should be bored out of his mind, Jacob was content to make a sad attempt at halting the slaughter while Nessie mused about what-it-was she liked to think about.

"When I grow up you'll look at me the way you look at Leah, right?"

She took his silence as a sign of miscommunication and reached across the table to hold his hand, showing him exactly which looks she meant. Good thing Edward was out hunting.

"Yeah," he said gruffly. "I'll have to look at you like I look at her."

* * *

_...so Embry isn't the last to know, though he feels like his is._

Jacob was twenty minutes late picking him up—that was the only reason Embry was bored enough to read an encyclopaedia. He read about wolves because he was vain like that.

What else was there to do at a library, anyway?

_Tension increases within the pack when the breeding pair feels the urge to mate..._

Maybe that's why we've been so jumpy lately, he snorted to himself. The breeding pair is screwing us over. I should probably talk to Jake and Leah about that...

He dropped the book—they _had_ been hanging around each other an awful lot lately.

"Shh..."


	3. Sue & Emily & Emmett & Rachel & Sam

_Mothers and fathers are forever...and they always know..._

No one was supposed to be home. Sue had made diner for Charlie Swan, who talked to her and wore shoes all at the same time; her children mentioned something about Embry's house.

But there was light coming from the shed in the backyard.

Harry's shed.

Leah was sitting at her father's workbench, fingers traveling over the roughly cut wood that no one could bear to touch since...

"Mom... he can't, but we're going to try anyway."

She wasn't Harry's little girl anymore; Sue hugged their daughter, anyway.

* * *

__

...so do sisters, because they are forever, too, even when you don't want them to be...

From the moment she responded to Sam's kiss (after all those weeks of trying to resist the adoration in his eyes) Emily knew she had lost her sister.

She had no right to expect forgiveness; she was not surprised when forgiveness never came. Oh, Leah did try. She was rude to Sam (and the rest of the world), but she always spoke kindly to her cousin. She traded gossip when they met in public. She smiled at Emily.

But the smile never reached her eyes.

And then one day it did.

* * *

_...and the ultimate big brother is watching you (don't underestimate him)..._

Emmett joked about if from the very beginning, when it was an easy defence whenever his flirting began to annoy Rose. Not that he wanted the female werewolf, but he missed being able to talk to a woman without wanting to eat her. Dog or not, Leah was still hot even if she couldn't hold a candle to Rosalie.

So he joked that the two wolves would just instinctively go at it.

One day he caught Rosalie biting her lip. He followed her gaze to the couple with the clasped hands melting back into the forest.

"I called that."

_

* * *

_

...and if blood needs a little nudge, sometimes, it comes through in the end...

Rachel doesn't get the wolf stuff.

Paul is the only reason she stays. She and everyone else don't try and pretend otherwise. Wolves are not her thing.

So when Jake asks for her help, she almost says no without thinking. She doesn't transform (phase, whatever). She doesn't kill vampires. She doesn't even bother staying awake when Billy starts telling the old stories.

But Rachel can tell her little brother that he isn't going to get anywhere with Leah Clearwater if he wears _that _shirt on a date out in public.

So she does.

_

* * *

_

...and sometimes family includes those you really wish it didn't...

Treaty negotiations, they called it, but it was really a surrender. Sam expected it, agreed with it, but it was difficult to shift from thinking as an Alpha to being a regular member of the pack.

It was a shock when Jacob offered to make him beta.

Leah just shrugged.

Sam accepted for tribal unity as he remembered Leah's stubborn face ordering him to go away to school. He wasn't leaving her behind, he was making _their_ future better; he had to be worthy of her faith.

He might have taken her position, but Sam knew he wasn't taking her place.


	4. Edward & Esme & Carlisle & Alice & Bella

_Edward hears and then suddenly the whole Cullen clan is demanding an explanation..._

The animals were easy to conquer; the hunting party headed back early. Edward never did say what he heard in Jacob's head.

It didn't matter.

He was already in the shapeshifter's face, breathing fire.

Jacob had once been the better choice, but he had become something more—he was Edward's ally, Edward's last hope, Edward's son. As Edward shouted with all the anger of an over-protective father, a tiny part of him wondered when he started thinking Jacob belonged to him.

Not that it stopped him from yelling at the mutt who had been unfaithful to his daughter.

* * *

_...even Esme, who believed in love more than anyone else..._

When the fighting started, Esme grabbed Nessie's hand and pulled the young girl from the room. She had to be protected, after all. They sat on the porch playing cat's cradle, thread strung between them, binding them together.

"Why is Father upset?"

Esme explained: "Jacob broke a promise."

Nessie reached out and showed Esme—showed Jacob being there always, showed him loving her still, showed him laughing with Leah, smiling at her. She showed Esme everything until Esme remembered there was more than one way to keep a promise.

Esme took Nessie's hand and led her back inside.

* * *

_...and Carlisle, who just wants his family safe. _

Emmett's the most careless of his sons, Jasper the most prone to violence. It is his first son, the steadfast Edward, that almost gets them all killed with his thoughtless words.

But Jacob is no longer the teenager the Cullens once invited to war.

"We want the treaty to hold," the Alpha wolf declares. "We don't want to fight you. I just want to leave Nessie alone."

All three of Carlisle's sons tense as he shakes hands with the chief of the Quileutes, but Carlisle's grip is firm. All of his sons follow his lead (though Edward scowls).

* * *

_Alice used to know..._

Everything.

The world as it might be (will be) flashes through her mind in bursts of hope and despair. They called her crazy, but now she knows she sees the truth. Everything is so vibrant in her head she can almost reach out and touch the future (she's a vampire; that's normal).

Alice used to know.

Then the shapeshifters came and Alice didn't know anything, anymore.

It was only as she watched Bella escort Jacob out the house that she began to wonder if, somehow, in between the glorious revelations of the future...had she abandoned her present?

* * *

_Bella waits until it's just the two of them, at the end, the way it should be..._

"Why?"

"I didn't plan this. It just happened—" Jacob snarled. "I'm staying with Leah. I love her and I won't forget that."

"You've imprinted, Jake," gently, lovingly, "Choosing Leah is like choosing both of them and you can't pick both of them."

Incredulous: "You did."

No.

"That's not fair."

It never was.

He sighed, even now trying to make everything easier for her. "I'm not leaving Leah; I'll figure out how to stop this mess with Nessie. Don't worry, Bells. She understands. It's not _your_ problem."

The worst part was that she knew he was right.


	5. Billy & Paul & Charlie Swan

A/N: It's my story and I'll cheat if I want to :P

* * *

_Billy was afraid to hope..._

Listen. Carefully.

It wasn't the time for misunderstandings.

"You want to know if the legends hint at anything that might undo the imprint."

Jacob nodded.

"Why now?"

Years after Billy's throat had turned raw from talking about duty and pride... why now?

Jacob blushed.

So Leah Clearwater had come through after all.

Good. And bad. No son was worse than one chained to the Cold Ones.

Jacob didn't blink as Billy told him a final story, about two men.

One who succeeded. One who died.

Jacob listened until the end and kissed his father's weathered cheek and went to try.

* * *

_...but Paul just wasn't that observant._

Paul never really liked the leeches, but he helped Brady carry the body of their Alpha—so broken and emaciated that he almost wasn't recognizable—to the vamp Doc as fast as he could.

They waited and as Jacob was rebroken and stitched and who knew what else until he finally stirred.

And suddenly Leah, who hadn't done anything but stare in horror since she got there, burst out:

"You idiot!"

Paul watched as she launched herself across the room and, careful not to touch his broken body, kissed Jacob Black like the world was ending.

"When did that happen?"

* * *

_When you don't want to know, sometimes you miss things. Thing #29839 that Charlie Swan never really wanted to learn._

It was last minute, but Billy managed to get a ride from Emily in the end. Only Seth forgot to pass the message on to Charlie, so the police chief pulled up to the Black residence and thought he was expected. When he found the door opened, he went right on in.

"Billy?" he called.

Something thumped in the other room and Charlie poked his head inside to investigate. He had barely taken in the couches when Jacob popped up from behind one of them.

"Can I help you, Charlie?"

"I'm here for Billy," he said. He thought Jacob had gotten better about wearing a shirt in public, but he guessed the rules didn't apply to his own home.

"He already left," Jacob said, shifting uncomfortably, still not moving from behind the couch. "He caught a ride. He said he called you—I'm sorry about this."

"That's fine," Charlie said stepping further into the room, sitting down. "I haven't seen you in a while, Jacob. How have you been?"

"Um...great. All healed up from the accident."

That was when Charlie noticed the shirt on the floor beside the couch—and how it was moving. By itself.

That wasn't right.

And as Jacob inquired as to how Charlie was, the old police officer started noticing things about the room. The table was off center. The couch was in disarray. The pillows were on the floor. And was that a woman's shirt hanging off the lamp...?

"I better be going," Charlie said abruptly, rising to his feet.

Jacob didn't even bother pretending he wanted him to say, just called out, after the retreating policeman: "Nice to see you, Charlie."

The laughter came before Charlie reached the door. Familiar laughter, as familiar as the shirt had been. He slammed the door a little harder than he meant to in his eagerness to escape.

Leah was still laughing as the door closed—at least until Jacob came back down to the floor.

* * *

The End


End file.
